InfoQ Homepage Windows 8 Content on InfoQ
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There Will Be No Metro UI for Mono
Miguel de Icaza said that Xamarin won’t port Metro to other platforms, one of the reasons being Linux’ failure on the desktop. .NET developers interested in writing cross platform apps will be able to do so using Mono for the business code and rewriting the UI code for each platform.
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Design Details of the Windows Runtime
The Windows Runtime (WinRT) was created to provide a fluid and secure application experience on Windows. WinRT was influenced by both .NET, C++ and JavaScript. WinRT does not replace the CLR or Win32, but rather provides unified support for applications written in different languages to run on Windows using the new Metro UI.
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Designing Loosely Coupled Metro Applications with URIs
Protocols allow applications to launch other applications using URIs much as you would launch a website. This allows you to build a collection of small work-flow centric applications that work together seamlessly.
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Windows Azure News: Support for Windows 8, SDK 1.5, Storage Replication and Others
Microsoft has announced at the BUILD conference a number of new tools for developing applications that interact with the cloud: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8, Windows Azure SDK 1.5, Windows Azure Marketplace, Replication for Windows Azure Storage, Service Bus September Release, and Windows Azure Service Management API.
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Microsoft has Abandoned Silverlight and All Other Plugins in Metro IE
Though it has been hard, we have been trying to avoid reporting on rumors about the death of Silverlight for quite some time. As in all things, rumors tend to be exaggerated or out-right false. Unfortunately the end of Silverlight is no rumor; if Microsoft doesn’t change course it, as well as Flash and other plugin technologies, will be effectively unusable when Windows 8 is released.
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C++ Component Extensions: The New Face of COM
COM Programming is alive and well on the Windows platform and a new variant of C++ makes it much more approachable. Known as C++ Component Extensions, this new language was used to create the new Windows runtime, WinRT.
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Build Sessions to Watch For
With 274 sessions at the //Build/ conference it is hard to predict which are going to be important and which are just filler. Here is a rundown of the sessions we think are going to be important to enterprise developers.
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WinRT: An Object Orientated Replacement for Win32
WinRT is a modern OS-level API that is built upon the Windows kernel. It isn’t just a layer on top of Win32, it is a replacement for it. Built with Object Orientated concepts such as a unified type systems and reflection, it is equally usable from C++, .NET, and dynamic languages such as JavaScript.
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Major UI Themes in Windows 8
Windows 8 Metro doesn’t just change the way applications look, it fundamentally changes how they behave. Applications will no longer be running in the background at all times, they will be suspended whenever they are not view. Rather than a save button, most applications will be constantly updating data on the cloud so that the user can seamlessly switch from one device to the next.
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Windows 8 Replaces the Win32 API
Windows 8 introduces a new core API called WinRT. This is used to develop Metro style applications using C/C++, .NET, or JavaScript. These applications automatically gain features such as hardware acceleration and advanced power management out of the box. Existing Silverlight and WPF applications can be ported to the new “Native XAML” libraries with minimal effort.
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Surface SDK 2.0 Targets Windows Touch Devices
With Microsoft Surface SDK 2.0 one can write applications for both Surface and Windows Touch devices.
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Windows 8 – As we first saw it
The public had its first glimpse of Windows 8 on June 1 at the D9 conference in Taipei. Windows 8, as claimed by Mike Anguilo, corporate vice president of Windows Planning, Hardware and PC Ecosystem, is designed ground up to work with "touch only" tablets and also devices with keyboard and mouse.
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Microsoft’s Silence is Infuriating .NET Developers
Earlier this month Microsoft unveiled a new touch-centric UI for Windows 8. According to the presentation this new UI allows Windows 8 applications built using just HTML5 and JavaScript. This is great news for web developers looking to do more with the Windows platform, but Microsoft is refusing to say whether or not .NET can also be used for this new application model.
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MIX 2011: What to Expect
HTML 5, Silverlight 5, and a surprise announcement about Windows Phone 7 look to be on the table at MIX 2011. We are also going to see information on Surface 2, ECMAScript 5, the next version of Web Forms, and the Microsoft Media Platform.
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A DSL for Multi-touch Gestures
As part of the TouchToolkit, Frank Maurer and Shahedul Huq Khandkar have created a DSL for multi-touch gestures. The language is in a declarative style with two sections. The first section, labeled “validate”, contains the rules used to determine if a specific gesture is being performed. The second section contains the return values for the gesture.